


No rest for the weary

by anotherthief



Category: Fast & Furious 6 (2013), Fast and the Furious Series, Furious 7 (2015)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 12:51:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5457143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anotherthief/pseuds/anotherthief
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Takes place between movie six and seven. Sleepless nights filled with thoughts and mostly worries.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No rest for the weary

**Author's Note:**

  * For [voleuse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/voleuse/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy! Happy Holidays!

No one sleeps at night, or at least, not well. Getting pardons, bringing Letty home, the money, all of these things were supposed to make life sweet and easy, but the demons and bad guys don’t disappear just because the action is over. Fear lingers, nightmares don’t end, and just because they’ve stopped running doesn’t mean the danger has passed. The known threats they dealt with, it’s the unknown that keeps them up worrying, the what-ifs, the close calls, and the damage left behind.

__

_Mia_

Jack’s cries pierce the night air. Brian stirs, but Mia puts a hand on his back to let him know she has this. If he’s managing to sleep, she wants him to continue to do so. One of them will have to be up in a few hours when Jack rises for the day, Brian can take first shift.

Their baby boy still wakes up in the middle of the night a few times a week. Mia wishes she could blame the dark circles under her eyes on Jack, but the truth is Mia just doesn’t sleep much. Her brain kicks into overdrive and she often finds herself doing laundry or online shopping until the wee hours of the morning and crawling into bed before sunrise only for Jack to wake a couple of hours later.

When she walks into Jack’s room he’s standing up in his crib, whimpering with crocodile tears rolling down those sweet cheeks. She lifts him up and he immediately nuzzles into her neck, taking the comfort she offers. She carries him to the kitchen where she warms up a bottle. She knows Jack isn’t really hungry, but cuddles and a couple ounces and he’ll be able to drift back to sleep. As they settle into the rocker, Mia gazes down at her beautiful baby boy, but her mind begins to wander.

They say you can’t go home again, but maybe going home isn’t the problem. The house stands, but the neighbors have changed, their friends are dispersed, and it’s really just this little family of bandits and thieves they’ve assembled who remain for a little while before spreading out to different corners of the globe. She loves Brian and Jack and the family they have made with each other, but the notoriety that they bring home with them is sometimes more than she can bear.

Jack’s eyes are heavy. Mia takes away the bottle and replaces it with his pacifier, snuggles him up and breathes in his scent. The baby shampoo they have smells a bit like the ocean. She picked it out at the store because Jack slept better in Cuba and she thought that maybe if she brought the smell of the ocean closer to him, it would help him sleep through the night.

So many things were easier in Cuba. They were just faces in the crowd. They had no connections, so no one knew their past or their present. She was the girl from the neighborhood surrounded by friends and family. Times were hard, but they had a community of people ready to step in should she need it. Sure, there was some notoriety attached to being Dom’s sister. They weren’t squeaky clean, but they weren’t world class criminals who had been chased halfway around the world and back again.

The stares in the grocery store sting, and so do the ones that follow them to their pew on Sunday. But people’s faces, accusatory and awestruck, aren’t what keep her up at night. No, what keeps her brain whirring is knowing that the girl from the block is gone. It’s hard not to wonder if that Mia would be proud of the choices she’s made. She rocks Jack and soothes his cries and she wonders, would that Mia be a better mother? The choices she’s made and the scars she carries have changed her. She doesn’t have any regrets, she loves Dom and Brian and knows that she would follow them to the end of the world if they asked her to (and has), but then she looks down at her sleeping son and she worries about the legacy they’ve created for him.

__

_Brian_

Brian hears their son’s cries turn into whimpers and then go silent, meaning Mia has it under control. Mia always seems to have things under control. Brian wishes he could say the same about himself.

Brian rolls to his back and stares up at the ceiling fan, hoping the spinning will make him drowsy enough to fall back to sleep. The dream he was having is fragmenting as the minutes pass. He was driving somewhere, unsurprisingly enough. His dreams usually entail being on the move, danger and bullets ever present on his tail. He doesn’t really care to psychoanalyze, but it’s not hard to connect the restlessness he feels when he’s awake to his dreams.

Before Jack was born, Brian worried about being a good dad. He didn’t have much of an example to follow. But when they put Jack in his arms for the first time, Brian stopped worrying about repeating his own father’s mistakes. He loved Jack and Mia and he would never walk out on them, but he also couldn’t pretend it was easy learning to stay still.

The clock on the nightstand reads 4:42 when Brian rolls over and sits up. He runs a hand through his hair. Mia has been with Jack for almost an hour. Brian stands and goes to Jack’s room to check on them. When he reaches the doorway, he stops and leans against the doorframe. Mia and Jack are asleep in the rocker. His whole world lays out in front of him; he just has to find a way to shake off that nagging ache for adventure that lingers in the back of his mind.

Brian sighs then walks over to Mia. He gently eases Jack out of his mother’s arms. Mia stirs and smiles when she sees him. He lays Jack in his crib then takes Mia by the hand to lead her back to bed.

__

_Dom_

A few blocks away from Brian and Mia’s, Dom sits on the floor in the hall with his back against Letty’s bedroom door. He woke up an hour ago. He feels too old for nightmares, but then again you never really outgrow fear.

In Dom’s nightmare, he’s back on the bridge with Letty flying toward him, but he’s a second too late, or paralyzed by fear, or a million other things that means he loses her, again. He wakes up in a cold sweat, and when he goes to reach for her, she’s not there. Letty came back to him, but she hasn’t come back to his bed.

Which is how he winds up here, sitting on the hardwood, resisting every urge he has to go in, to reassure himself that she’s still breathing, she’s still his. It would make him feel better, but it’s not what she needs, and Dom will sit out here all night, every night, if that’s what it takes to give her the time and the space to find her way again.

__

_Letty_

On the other side of the door, Letty stares out the open window at the night sky. She lies awake, willing herself to remember, and terrified that if she does it still won’t be enough to put the pieces of her life back together again.


End file.
